This article describes how some species have come to flourish in urban areas. With habitat destruction in their usual habitats animals, such as foxes, will take advantage of the food available in towns and cities.

Like the fox, the hedgehog benefits from food available in urban areas. Not only will they take left overs but are often purposefully fed. In fact, the general public are even more aware of the correct things to leave out for hedgehogs. For example, bread and milk, which is bad for hedgehogs, is being replaced by pet food or specially made hedgehog food.

Villages and towns can also offer hedgehogs refuge from predation from badgers. However, living in close proximity to humans has many other perils for hedgehogs including; traffic, dogs, poisoning from slug pellets and entanglement in sports and garden netting.

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The peregrine is just one of many species that have invaded British cities in the last few decades, encouraged in no small part by an urban ecology movement that flourished in the 1980s. “There are those that have done well – pigeons, foxes, gulls – because of our food,” says Mathew Frith, an ecologist and policy director at the London Wildlife Trust. “There are others that have done well without our intervention, such as the black redstart, known as the ‘bombsite bird’ because of its liking for the cover that bomb sites provided.”